Bearing the weight of devastating loss, a woman has fled post-war London for the sanctuary of her Swiss chalet. As she lies in the sun and lets her gaze linger on her thin sliver of garden, nature and solitude begin to do their work. Recording her thoughts in a journal, she eventually finds herself well enough to feel lonely and irritable – and then two English sisters arrive at her door...

While the narrator is pleased that the sisters have agreed to keep her company at the chalet, Kitty and Dolly remain frustratingly tight-lipped about the past.

This delightful short novel of 1920, from the author of ‘The Enchanted April’, is a hymn to the restorative powers of nature, landscape and companionship.

Read by Ruth Gemmell
Written by Elizabeth von Arnim
Abridged by Clara Glynn
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie Show less